Page:Henry VI Part 2 (1923) Yale.djvu/140

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The Second Part of

a quite different and even more garbled account of these facts.

II. iii. 4. Such as by God's book are adjudg'd to death. Cf. Exodus 22. 18: 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'; and Leviticus 20. 6: 'And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards . . . I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people.'

II. iii. 7, 8. The witch in Smithfield shall be burnt to ashes, And you three shall be strangled on the gallows. Holinshed's account is as follows: 'Margerie Iordeine was burnt in Smithfield, and Roger Bolinbrooke was drawne to Tiburne, and hanged and quartered; taking vpon his death that there was neuer anie such thing by them imagined. Iohn Hun had his pardon, and Southwell died in the Tower the night before his execution.' These lines dealing with the punishment of the Duchess's accomplices are not found in the Contention version. Holinshed's statement that Hun, or Hume, 'had his pardon' may have prompted the suggestion in I. ii. 88 f. that he betrayed the Duchess's plot.

II. iii. 13. With Sir John Stanley, in the Isle of Man. The dramatist appears here to be following Halle's (or Grafton's) Chronicle. Holinshed gives the name correctly as Sir Thomas Stanley. The error is found in the Contention version (e.g., in lines corresponding to II. iv. 78, 80, 85), and is not an evidence that Shakespeare himself forsook his favorite Holinshed for Halle. (The present line is not in the Contention.)

II. iii. 46. Thus Eleanor's pride dies in her youngest days. Some editors take 'her' as referring to 'pride,' but the Duchess's pride is nowhere represented as a newly acquired characteristic. Probably 'youngest' should be understood, like the Latin novissimi, as latest, most recent, in which case the meaning is that Eleanor's pride, so long maintained, dies at last.